China’s economic recovery continues as manufacturing activity rises to highest level since January 2011 (Source South China Morning Post)

The Chinese manufacturing sector continued to show strong activity in October, indicating the nation’s robust rebound from the coronavirus pandemic continued in the first month of the fourth quarter. “To sum up, recovery was the word in the current macro economy, with the domestic epidemic under control. Manufacturing supply and demand improved at the same time. Enterprises were very willing to increase inventories. Prices tended to be stable. Business operations improved, and entrepreneurs were confident,” said Wang Zhe, senior economist at Caixin Insight Group. China’s overall economy has continued its recovery from the impact of the coronavirus, with growth in the third quarter accelerating to 4.9 per cent  from 3.2 per cent in the second and a contraction 6.8 per cent in the first. China is expected to be the only Group of 20 country to record positive growth this year, with the International Monetary Fund  projected growth of 1.9 per cent this year, following by a further acceleration to 8.2 per cent in 2021.

America Is Eerily Retracing Rome’s Steps to a Fall

(Source politico.com) Americans will choose between two radically different paths: a populist ideology transforming the values of the country itself, and an attempt to reject it. However unprecedented these times might feel, it’s a decision as old as democracy itself. Over 2,000 years ago, the Republic on which America was modeled faced the same choice. The Donald Trump of his day, Julius Caesar, promised to return Rome to an imagined ancient glory—but instead constructed himself a throne, bulldozing democratic norms, ignoring checks on his power and eroding political debate. Rome chose to follow Caesar, putting the famed Republic on a glide path to destruction. Opponents of both Trump and Caesar have woefully misunderstood their appeal. As with Trump, Caesar’s image was mired in what his opposition always felt would be his downfall; his braggadocio, his hostility toward political opponents, a history of financial, political and sexual irregularities. And yet, the more outrageously he behaved, the more devoted his followers became. Trump’s opponents, too, have often reacted like Caesar’s: at first with pearl-clutching incredulity about his “unpresidential” image while failing completely to deal with the power of his message—followed by a propensity to adopt a Trumpian, Caesarean style of “us vs. them” communication themselves. These parallels come with a warning for the United States today: Two thousand years ago, many establishment Romans misunderstood the damage that Caesar was doing to the state’s political culture and institutions. The environment of strongman politics Caesar helped to create left civil war and violence as the only effective means of political change—and ultimately sealed his own fate. After he had himself appointed “Dictator for Life,” there was no longer a legitimate political avenue by which to remove him: The result, famously, was a bloody tyrannicide in the Senate house itself. But even with his death, transformation of Rome’s political culture into the rule of the strong could not be reversed, as new contenders emerged for yet another round of brutal civil wars that finally extinguished the Republic once and for all.